Above the Vaulted Sky - Page 66

               ‘What, you don’t know?’ she says, genuinely shocked.

                ‘Well, no, I was following you!’

                ‘Oh, I was following you,’ she replies. ‘I have to say, Easton, our crime fighting days aren’t off to a great start.’

                ‘Well – I –‘ I don’t quite know what to say.

                ‘He’s your starbright man,’ she says. ‘Have a think, how might this have happened? That’d be a good place to start. I mean, people don’t just fall off the face of the earth.’

                ‘Well, he had this device,’ I reply. ‘Like a remote control, only a lot more complicated.’

                ‘How complicated?’ she asks. ‘On a scale of 1 to 90s VCR.’

                I stop, letting out an embarrassing snort. In a lot of ways she reminds me of Penny. She makes me laugh.

                ‘Pretty 90s,’ I confirm. ‘It looked like it was cobbled together. I can only assume that he’s found a way to cross over, become like us.’

                ‘What, like a death remote?’ she suggests. ‘Unless…maybe we’re not really dead. Maybe we’re something else. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never really felt dead. I mean, this is a personal thing, but I feel a whole lot better now than I did when I was alive.’

                I have an idea, I wonder if she’s discovered it yet. ‘Can you close your eyes and sense everyone?’ I realise how strange it would sound if she didn’t know. Luckily, her face lights up.

                ‘Yeah! That’s how I woke up. It was like I was tuned in to the world.’

                ‘So, you didn’t fall into the Edge?’

                ‘The Edge?’ she asks. ‘What’s that? Sounds awesome.

                I wave my hand in front of me. ‘Depends on your definition of awesome? I thought that’s where everyone went first? It feels like falling, like you’ll never stop, and you see all your memories flying past like they’re windows you can step through.’

                ‘Not ringing any bells,’ she says. ‘Then, I have a lot of memories I don’t want to see again.’

                Maybe it does work like that, maybe our bodies know how much of our lives we want to see. Or if we need to. People like Elle, with heads full of chemo sessions, distraught parents, desperate times when death felt like a friend coming to visit, can’t, or won’t see the Edge. Is that better? To be cut off from all the happy times, no matter how few?

                ‘I like my loved ones alive,’ she nods her head, as though confirming it for both of us.